After months of haggling, state lawmakers reached a preliminary state education budget that includes a 1.25 percent increase in K-through-12 spending, plus $55.7 million in one-time spending. State education officials are not happy with those numbers.
The Iowa State Education Association and its thousands of members spoke out today about the lack of funding, saying it’s much below their initial request for a four percent increase. ISEA’s Melissa Peterson said the lean budget won’t save many school programs and classes from the chopping block.
“This is going to enable school district to barely keep up with the rate of inflation for this year alone,” said Peterson. “There still will be positions and programs that are still cut.”
Peterson said next year’s budget process will be even shakier.
“Considering we still don’t know what’s going to be happening for the 2017 fiscal year,” said Peterson, “there are lot of school districts that are still going to be very cautious in bringing back positions and programs because they don’t know what they can anticipate from a budgetary perspective for next year.”
Though this year’s fight surrounding the budget is over, Peterson said lawmakers should not have even been haggling over state education funds.
“We’ve got a Republican governor, a Republican House, and a Democratic senate, but if they all don’t value and want to make the same investments, it makes things very challenging,” said Peterson. “So hopefully everyone gets the resounding message that this is an area that ought to transcend politics, frankly.”
The final budget still has to be approved by the governor.
